Three Years Ago Today
by SparkleHorse
Summary: An important anniversary is approaching.
1. Chapter 1

Sam and Carly sat in orange plastic swivel chairs, facing each other across a table almost too small to hold their fried chicken platters. Carly tore a piece of crispy crust from a drumstick, munched it thoughtfully. A horn honked out in the parking lot.

"You already ordered some to take back to Spencer and Freddie?" Carly asked.

Sam, her mouth too full of chicken meat to say 'yes,' grunted an affirmative sound. She finished chewing, swallowed it down, said, "Yeah, they'll bring it out to us." She wiped her fingers on one of the little cheap brown napkins and watched for a moment as Carly picked at her drumstick.

"I haven't seen you shake once today yet," Sam said.

Carly glanced down at the floor, smiled. "The new medicine helps a lot with that."

She glanced up as the bell rang over the front door of the restaurant. A young Hispanic girl walked in from the sunlight, wearing skinny jeans and a black T-shirt from Warm Subject that bore the logo of some quasi-metal/emo hybrid band. Sam called those kinds of bands 'mallcore' and insisted they all sounded exactly alike.

Carly watched the girl approach the counter and place her order. Sam glanced over her shoulder, then looked back to Carly and flashed an evil grin.

"Sam," Carly sighed. "She's too young."

"Hey, if you're not old enough to buy alcohol yet, then you should still be allowed to do it with teenagers."

Carly chuckled, sighed. "It's so beyond sexual, though. She's cute, yeah, but it's not like I want to throw her to the floor and do her. It's so much more than that."

Sam bit into her fourth chicken wing. "Ah, the identification thing again?"

"You just want to follow her home and see what it's like, you know? You just want to experience for yourself the sweet, beautiful texture of her life."

"If it is indeed sweet and beautiful."

Carly nodded. "If it is."

The Hispanic girl, having placed her order, sat down in a booth by the front window. The late afternoon sunlight fell on her like a warm, golden cloud. Soon she had her phone in her hands and was texting with someone.

"Ma'am, your order is ready," an employee said from the counter, gesturing at Sam and Carly with two boxes stacked in a white plastic bag.

"Ooh, I'll get it,"Carly said, enthusiasm ringing in her voice. She sprung to her feet with the drumstick still in her right hand, stepped quickly toward the counter, but then stopped, frozen. She moaned, dropped the chicken leg on the orange tile floor. It rolled, picking up dust and hair and cobweb as debris stuck to the grease in the meat.

"I got it," Sam said, kneeling down quickly. She picked up the chicken leg, threw it in the trash, then took the bag from the guy behind the counter. She turned, laid her hand on the younger girl's shoulder.

"Come on, Carls."


	2. Chapter 2

Carly gasped awake. The first seconds were darkness, of course. The fluorescent pinks and blues of the plastic, glow in the dark stars glued to the ceiling were fading in the late hours. She sensed the silvery light of the outdoor street lamps glowing at the edge of the shadows. The ceiling fan whirred overhead, cooling the sweat at her chest and neck and shoulders. She'd pushed her sheet down to her hips.

"Another nightmare?" Sam whispered. The blond girl burrowed closer, lifting Carly's arm and laying it over her own shoulders.

"Yeah," Carly answered simply. There was no need to elaborate.

"Turn your music on," Sam urged.

Carly reached toward the night stand on her left, took her PearPod out of it's dock. She scrolled through the menu, selected her Cocteau Twins playlist, then set the PearPod back and hit some buttons. The swirly, modulated chords of 'Cherry Coloured Funk' swam forth from the tinny little speakers. She adjusted the volume down until Liz Fraser's heavenly voice was just a soothing background melody.

"You're lucky you don't have them more often," Sam said.

Carly sighed, rolled closer, combed her fingers through Sam's blond curls. "I've always known it wasn't my fault, and I never felt guilty about it... I guess I've just always felt connected to him because it's an experience we shared, you know? Our lives converged at that moment and, for whatever reason, I came out of it. He didn't."

"Well, getting physically fucked up can cause post traumatic stress regardless of your conscious feelings about it." Sam placed a kiss on Carly's collar bone. "But your feelings about the whole situation are complex. They're not the simplistic, TV-style discourses that fit into neat, arranged categories, and I don't know that anyone these days has the cognitive framework to interpret things like that. So your mind tries to make sort it all out while you sleep."

"No cognitive framework?" Carly laughed. She poked a finger in Sam's rib. "What are they teaching you in college?"

Sam slid her hand under the thin sheet. Her fingertip found Carly's scar, traced it over the delicate hip bone and along the waist.

"That collagen grows where skin tissue was damaged," Sam said, her lower lip dragging along the side of Carly's neck. "But it's not as complex. All of the fibers grow in the same direction, instead of interlacing like real skin tissue, so you can never sweat from a scar, or grow hair from one."

Carly clutched a fist full of blond hair as Sam nibbled at the tender skin between her neck and collar bone. A tremor ran through her foot, then her left arm.

"Am I broken? Was I put back together right? Or am I just some inferior, less complex version of the Carly I was before?"

Sam stopped, sighed against Carly's breast.

"Have you ever heard of a serial killer named Coral Watts?"

"No."

Sam moved a strand of hair out of her mouth. "His former wife said that he had dreams every night where he was fighting people. He'd be swinging his fists in his sleep, then fall out of bed, and just be all worked up. Couldn't ever find any kind of relief, even in sleep. He'd wake up in the middle of the night, leave the house, and go kill some random woman. It's one thing to have thoughts of doing bad things, but to actually be driven to go out and do things like that? To think it's okay to act on those kinds of impulses?"

"What's your point, Sam?"

"You've heard me talk about my great-aunt Maggie?" Sam continued. "Her schizophrenia got so bad that they had to give her the strongest medicine they had to keep her from cutting herself up and chewing her own fingers off. I saw her at the mental home once when she was all doped up, and she was literally a zombie. I looked in her eyes, and there was nothing there. Just a body. Just some flesh that still had enough energy or whatever to still be considered alive."

"Again, your point?"

"Nature produces people damaged beyond repair."

"Do you think I'm - "

"I think you're very lucky," Sam interrupted. "Even with the scars and the shaking, the YOU part is still intact inside."

"And if I would've -"

"It wouldn't have been you anymore. All the things you think are YOU, your personality and memories and all that, are just neurons firing in a fixed sequence. Disrupt that order, and the YOU part disappears."

"No," Carly said, raising herself up on her elbow. She rubbed the soft skin on Sam's arm. "I refuse to accept that. There's more to us than that. I _felt_ it. When I... you know, went and apologized to him the first time, I felt something divine in the air. I know he heard me."

"And I was first on the scene that night," Sam said, the tip of her thumb following a scar that snaked along Carly's ribs. "I saw what is inside of you. It's guts, and squishy red stuff. There's nothing divine about it at all."

Carly dropped back to the bed, sighing, giving up.

Sam leaned over her. "But that's why love is so important. That's why we should experience as much of it as we can, and experience as many beautiful things as we can in the time we have."

With that, the blond laid a trail of gentle kisses in the hollow of Carly's throat, along her breast bone, at her navel, just above the silky black hair lower down.

Carly gasped as Sam's lips found the tender pod of flesh. Sam's technique was expert - she found a steady rhythm, never slowing or speeding or changing direction. Carly locked her ankles across Sam's lower back.

The celestial opening notes of 'Heaven or Las Vegas' rang from the speakers next to the bed just as Carly's body sensed the first pulses of the climax. It was like a tsunami, with a small and distant awareness at first, but growing in strength and size as it approached, before finally crashing and breaking over in multiple waves of fury. Her body shook. A long, low moan hung in her throat as her wetness welled forth.

And afterward - after Carly had taken her turn tasting of Sam, after they'd wiped the sweat from each other's bodies and laid satisfied in each other's arms, feeling their heartbeats slow and their skin cool, watching the numbers on the digital clock advance ever deeper into the night - Sam took at deep breath, her nose close to Carly's breast, as if she were searching for a scent that had grown faint and faded.

"We feel this way for each other because of pheremones we can't even smell."


	3. Chapter 3

Sam and Carly walked along the sidewalk, weaving in and out among knots of people, dodging puddles of rainwater. They could hear the crowd cheering on the other side of the town as a band played. Only the bass line reached the girls across the distance.

"Hey! That's 'In Bloom,'" Carly said.

Sam paused to listen. "Sure is." She smiled, slung her arm over Carly's shoulders, pulled her closer as they walked on.

They stopped at the entrance gate to downtown Aberdeen, paid cash for the entrance fee at a little wooden booth. The hippie chick working the booth snapped stretchy, neon green bracelets around their wrists and waved them on. Arm in arm they walked under the banner that hung over the entrance to the downtown square: "_First Annual Kurt Festival_."

They wondered if they made a weird looking pair as they wandered closer to the concert area, with Carly in a long sleeved black T-shirt, black skirt, old pair of low-top All Stars; and Sam in a peach colored polo shirt with the Black Flag logo markered on the left breast, a pair of khaki cargo pants hacked off mid-shin, and red sneakers.

Carly looked down at the arm locked into hers. Sam's arms were very tan this year, and her golden hair had grown longer, a flowing tumble of locks.

She turned her attention to the three young boys walking in front of them. They looked about 10, 12, and 14 respectively, all in black shorts and dark sweaters, all with shaggy dark hair. Carly assumed they must be brothers. A ghost of a thought danced through her head - something about the boys' DNA, or how the similarities in flesh and blood linked their souls; but she couldn't get the thought to make itself coherent.

They walked on past all the little downtown shops. They were close enough to hear the pummeling guitar chords of Scentless Apprentice by then. They reached the end of the sidewalk, turned off onto a muddy dirt trail that led through a stretch of woods. They followed the brothers, passed a group of 30-somethings in flannel shirts and raincoats going back the other way. They came out of the woods and reached the edge of a hill that overlooked the concert stage. The valley below was thick with people all the way up to the security barrier in front of the stage. A mosh pit was breaking up in the center of the crowd. The first band had finished their set and was taking down their equipment. Small little groups of people stood or lounged on blankets all along the slope of the hill. The three brothers disappeared in the crowd.

Sam consulted the flyer in her hand. "I think the next band is that all-girl band we saw a few months ago."

"Oh, the girl with the pink hair?"

"Yeah."

Sam glanced to her left - a row of tents and vendors stood along the crest of the hill, selling T shirts and beer and corn dogs. To her right, a group of guys had stripped down to their underwear and were sliding in the mud down the hill.

"It _is_ her," Carly said, tugging Sam's sleeve, pointing to the stage. "Looks like she has green hair this time, though."

The four girls came on stage with flannel shirts tied around their waists. They set up and tuned quickly, then launched into the bone-shaking opening notes of Blew. When it was over, they went straight into Floyd the Barber before the crowd could even cheer. When the green haired girl started strumming the chords for About A Girl, it was obvious the band was going to play Bleach in its entirety. Clods of mud were flying up into the air as the mosh pit grew rowdier.

Sam noticed Carly watching the goings on in the mosh pit. She reached over and hugged Carly closer.

It was in the middle of Negative Creep that the rain began again. It fell lightly at first, but Sam clasped Carly's wrist and ran with her over to one of the covered kiosks selling cotton candy and smoked sausages on sticks. Just as they ducked under the cover of the canopy the rain began to pour heavily. The concert stage was covered, so the band continued to play, but the crowd in the mosh pit grew even wilder as the rain beat down on them.

"Arg," Carly gasped, catching her breath. "How could he make such awesome music and still not be satisfied?"

"What?" Sam asked, raising her voice over the music and the roar of rain. She stepped away from a puddle just outside the cover of the awning that was splashing cold water on her leg.

"He wrote such amazing songs, and it just wasn't enough for him," Carly said, quietly, gazing down into the valley where muddy people were crashing against the security barrier in front of the concert stage. She pulled her Pear Phone out of her pocket, checked to see if it had gotten wet.

Sam glanced over, watched Carly's fingertips drag along the lit screen. "Two more days, eh?"

Carly checked the date in the upper corner of the screen. Sighed. "Yeah."

They watched a few more minutes of the show. The intensity of the rain let up a bit, but fell steadily now, with no signs of stopping. The green haired singer yelled at the crowd between songs, but Carly and Sam couldn't hear what she was saying.

"What was it like?" Sam asked.

"What?"

"You know. That night. Right at that moment. Did you see white lights and visions of heaven, or was it just all black? Was it some kind of magical experience, or was it just a void?"

Carly sighed, looked out at the rain, thought about it.

"You were so close to the other side," Sam went on. "You had to have come away from it with something, right?"

"I honestly don't know, Sam. I don't remember much from that night."

"Then how can you be so sure?" She clutched at Carly's shoulder. "Why are you so certain there's something after?"

"Because look at that!" Carly said, pointing to the stage. The band was in the middle of Swap Meet now, with the singer belting out wiry, jagged screams during the chorus, putting into it every ounce of energy her body contained, every drop of passion in her soul. The rest of the band, without missing a note or a beat, still playing their instruments, was flipping off the crowd, and scooping up the clods of mud being thrown at them to launch back into the crowd.

"She _feels_ it, and he felt it when he wrote that song, and how can minds that are capable of feeling that kind of passion just stop being? How is it possible for our minds to perceive such beautiful things, and then just dissipate simply because our bodies stop working?"

She grasped the hand on her shoulder, turned, pressed her lips to Sam's, drew away, holding the blue eyes steady in her gaze. "What we feel for each other... Even if it is just because of pheremones, you think it's not gonna go with us?"

"Go where? Heaven? Hell? The Akashik field?" Sam glanced toward the concert stage, chuckled. "Nirvana? Where is it we go forever?"

"We don't go anywhere _forever_. Death isn't permanent, because there is no such thing as permanence." Carly smiled, slid her fingers along Sam's collarbone. "Don't they teach you this in college? Everything in the universe is always changing. No stasis. So if the universe is continual change, then how can death last forever? We won't just go somewhere and float around for eternity. Whatever energy it is that makes us gets recycled for eternity. There is no void, no oblivion, just... change."

Sam sighed, watched the rain fall for a minute. The singer was smashing her guitar to pieces on the stage. Sam slid her arms around Carly's waist, pulled her in close, nuzzled her face against the dark haired girl's shoulder.

"There's no evidence for anything like that, but I admit it's a lovely concept."


	4. Chapter 4

_Graduation night. Sam leaves the party, sits in her front seat for a few minutes until she's sure she is steady. She's only had a few drinks, but she pops a stick of gum to cover the smell on her breath. She thinks maybe she should've let Carly drive her home after all, the little teetotaler, but Carly left a few minutes ago in her little green Acura that she got as a graduation present. _

_Sam drives along the rain-slick street, letting the cool night air pour through her open window and refresh her. She's awake now, her senses sharp, the mental fog lifted. She turns the corner onto a side street. She can see up ahead at the intersection with the main thoroughfare that something is not right. The stop sign is leaning over at an odd angle. Shards of glass seem flung along the asphalt, twinkling under the street lights like a distant galaxy of stars._

_Sam hits the gas, swerves around the stop sign that's leaning into her lane, and comes out onto the main street. To her right is a pickup truck laying on its side in the ditch. Its cab is caved in, its windows totally blown out. The green Acura is turned sideways, its crumpled front end blocking the street, its back end up on the sidewalk._

_Sam can't breathe. She's paralyzed and shaking at the same time. She finally stumbles out of the car._

_A long smear of fresh blood along the street. Moans._

_Screams._

"Sam!"

Sam snapped awake. She lifted herself up, her neck stiff from sleeping on the floor.

"You were having another bad dream," Carly said. She sat on the edge of the bed in a pair of boys' boxers, long pale legs before her, silvery little bracelet encircling her ankle, toenails painted black. She was cradling the black and white Rickenbacker she'd bought with her iCarly money.

Sam smiled at her, laid back. She watched as Carly strummed the chords to 'Squeeze Wax.' The dark haired girl took a breath like she was about to start singing, but then stopped playing altogether as her hand clinched up. She held on to the pick, didn't drop it, just waited for the shaking to stop. It passed quickly. She held the pick in her mouth while massaging the muscles in her hand, then started playing again, picking out the main riff to 'Bluebeard.'

"La laaa la laaaaa, la la la laaaaa," Carly sang, exaggerating the pitch of her voice.

Sam laughed.

"I have no idea what she's actually saying," Carly admitted. She laid the guitar beside her on the bed. "And how was class this morning?"

"Easy," Sam said, stretching, rubbing her back muscles into the floor. "I already know I aced these finals." She yawned, then sat up again. "You ready for, um, this afternoon?"

"Yeah." She tucked her lower lip under her tooth, chewed it for a second. "I'd better be." She sighed. "We gotta stop somewhere on the way."

"No we don't."

"Why not?"

"Because," Sam said, crawling on hands and knees to Carly. "I love you." She lifted the hem of Carly's shirt, leaned in and bit the little silver hoop that pierced Carly's navel.

Carly laughed. "Sam, stop it!" She ran her hands through Sam's thick hair, trying to ease the blond's head away from her belly button.

"Grrr!" Sam growled, but let go and stood up. "Wait right here."

"I'm waiting."

Sam ran out of the room. Carly flicked at guitar strings with her thumbnail while she waited. She could hear Sam rooting around downstairs, then stomping back up the stairs.

"Spencer had to help me with this," Sam said, turning sideways to fit her gift through the doorway.

"Oh my god, Sam, you made that?"

"_With_ help from Spencer."

Carly stood. "Oh my goodness. A flower sculpture, huh?"

Sam held the wreath in both arms. From her shoulders to her knees, and three feet across, it stretched, a filigree of birch twigs, a spray of pink roses woven throughout.

Carly leaned in to smell the fragrant buds.

"These are fresh. When did you make this?"

Sam shrugged. "Did it in bits and pieces, here and there. Put the roses in last night while you were at therapy."

"It's beautiful. Thanks, Sam."

"Sure." Sam motioned with her chin. "Better get dressed if we're gonna get out there this afternoon."

The wreath was propped up in the back seat. Sam sat in the driver's seat, finishing her lime smoothie. Carly sat huddled in her overcoat, slurping a mixture of blueberry and blackberry. Her tongue was black when she licked traces of smoothie from her lips. Little droplets of rain rolled sparsely down the windshield.

From the parking lot across the street they watched the woman and her teenage children walk through the cemetery. The kids opened dark umbrellas as they made their way to a grave near the massive oak tree by the back fence.

"Are you ever going to go talk to his family?" Sam asked.

"If you were them, would _you_ want to see me?"

Sam sighed. "The brakes locked up. The road was wet. The cops said it wasn't your fault."

Sip. Shrug. "Still." Carly's dark eyes were fixed on the family as they huddled together under their umbrellas.

They sat in silence, watching the light rain roll down the windshield, watching the family lay flowers, finishing smoothies.

Sam cracked her window, felt at her jacket pocket. "I forgot I quit smoking."

No response. Carly stared; the hand holding her straw was frozen in midair.

"Carly? Carly! Hey, Carls! Hey!"

Carly shook her head. "Sorry."

Sam rubbed away an eyelash. "What was it you felt when you came here the first time? What was the divine thing that happened?"

"Hmm. You know how in movies people always go to a graveside and talk to the dead person?"

"Yeah."

"Well, I always thought that was pure Hollywood B.S. Nobody does that in real life, right? But... I when I finally came here, I felt compelled to. I just told him. And... I know he heard me. There was something in the air."

Sam slipped her hand into Carly's. They sat quietly for a long time, until the family left the cemetery.

Sam opened the back door and moved the wreath out. Carly picked it up.

"You sure you can...?"

"I'm not that crippled up," Carly said, smiling, leaning in for a kiss.

Their tongues briefly flirted against each other.

"I can taste your berries."

"I can taste your lime."

"It's an interesting combination." Another kiss. "I'll wait for you. Take however long you need."

Sam settled into the driver's seat, watched as Carly carried the wreath across the street, went through the cemetery gate. The rain had let up, was now the slightest drizzle.

She could still taste Carly's berry flavor on her tongue. Her whole body buzzed.

_Every kiss with her is still as exciting as the very first_, Sam thought.

She watched as Carly walked between the rows of headstones, and something in the air changed. Sam opened her center console, dug around until she found a pad of legal paper and a pen. She scribbled down some notes.

_This moment is so pure. I will keep finding newer, deeper levels of love. It never stops growing, never stops expanding. Chemistry? Or the divine? What if the chemical and the physical are necessary to transmit the divine?_

She chewed on her pen cap, looked up just in time to see Carly laying the wreath against the head stone.

"My energy and your energy are linked forever, Carly Shay," she whispered.


End file.
